Kryptonite Factor: A special weapon or element, whether it be magical or scientific, can often do harm while ignoring a character's Healing Factor. Sometimes, this weapon or element will be connected to how the Healing Factor came about in the first place.

Excessive Damage: Healing Factor may have a limit of how much damage can be regenerated

Complete Annihilation: Given situations like From a Single Cell, that is the only way to deal with such

Examples:

Namekians are the original regenerators in the franchise. They can heal dismembered limbs so long as their heads remain intact, although if they sustain enough damage they can die with their whole bodies remaining.

Cell is the Trope Namer for From a Single Cell, he can regenerate from any amount of damage so long as onecell remains intact. So the one way to beat him is to disintegrate him all at once.

Majin Buu is an even more insane example, being capable of regenerating if even a single atom of him remains. The only known way to kill him is a Spirit Bomb empowered by the population of everyone.

Brunch defeats Elg, a centaur that can create clones through regeneration, by putting him and his clones under an endless loop of electrification.

Midora bypasses Ichiyru's healing factor from Minority World, an ability that causes everything to behave in opposite ways than normally they do due to minor particles that defy physical law, by damaging him faster than he can regenerate with the Power of the Void.

Chiyo dices one of the branches of the Coral King into small and delicate pieces with a long ranged slashes and inhibit its regeneration by applying Knocking.

Overwhelming an someone to the point that their cells admit defeat will prevent them from regenerating and leave them at the mercy of the attacker.

Comic Books

One Wolverine story has Sabretooth gloating that he actually thought up the one way to beat a Healing Factor... as his foot is holding Wolverine's head underwater.

The primary villain of Heavy Metal 2000 stumbles upon a fluid that can grant him Resurrective Immortality, provided he takes regular doses. Tyler goes on a quest for the source after attaining the key. He ends up squished under a huge stone door where regeneration would avail him naught. Further, The Mole unmasks himself, and attains access to the wellspring of eternal life. However, once the huge stone door closes, he's trapped in that chamber. As The Hero remarks: "Forever is a long time to spend all alone."

Films — Live Action

The beginning of Hercules Unchained has a fight against Antaeus, who recovers from all injury whenever he touches the ground. Unlike the original Greek myth, Hercules defeats Antaeus by throwing him into the sea.

In The Wolverine, Wolverine has a bio-mechanical healing suppressant device implanted in him, thanks to Viper. For a large portion of the film, Wolverine finds he is no longer healing and needs to have his wounds stitched up.

In Logan, it's finally revealed that the long term effects of adamantium exposure is healing factor degeneration. Wolverine has had adamantium bound to his skeleton for years and isn't healing as well as he could. Ultimately, his healing factor is completely compromised and he dies.

Literature

Animorphs: Morphing normally heals all injuries, but there have been notable exceptions, few of which are explained beyond Drama-Preserving Handicap: suffering Mode Lock (Tobias is stuck in hawk morph at the beginning of the series so an injury would be particularly devastating, when the ability is restored he can heal but still has to live as a bird), a genetic disease (a crashed Andalite refuses to fight because the disease stays with him when he demorphs, while another is allergic to the morphing process and cannot repair his severed tail), time travel (Tobias breaks his wing while in the Cretaceous and can't restore it), and possibly old age (Jake ends up in a Bad Future where Rachel is a complete wreck in a wheelchair, with no indication that she'd lost her morphing ability).

One of Hercules' task was to kill the Hydra, which regrows any heads you cut off. He succeeded when his nephew Iolaos started to cauterize the stumps with his torch.

The giant Antaeus challenged travelers to a wrestling match to the death, without mentioning that every time he was in contact with his mother the Earth (i.e., thrown to the ground), his health and energy were completely restored. When Heracles came along, he solved the problem by hoisting Antaeus in the air with one hand and strangling him with the other.

Often werewolves are given a healing factor that is neutralized by silver.

The Lambton Worm is an English legend about a dragon which kills by constriction and is difficult to kill because it can re-attach parts of its body that are cut off. It is eventually killed by a Prince who lures it into the River Wear while wearing armour forged from razor blades — the blades hurt the beast when it tries to constrict him, and the river flow washes its severed body parts away.

1st Edition AD&D Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia, Greek Mythology section: each minute the giant Antaeus is in contact with the ground, he heals all damage and gains 25 additional Hit Points. The hero Heracles (Hercules) defeats him by lifting him off the ground and inflicting damage on him while doing so.

1st and 2nd Edition AD&D. When someone wears a Ring of Regeneration, they can only be prevented from regenerating if their body is totally destroyed by fire or acid.

2nd Edition AD&D Planescape boxed supplement Planes of Conflict. The Quesar live in the Upper Outer Plane of Elysium. They regenerate 1 Hit Point per round, even after being killed, as long as they're in daylight. To prevent them from regenerating you just have to keep them out of daylight, such as moving them underground or casting a spell to create darkness or summon thick cloud cover.

In Big Eyes, Small Mouth, any special attack with the No Regeneration modifier cannot be healed using the Healing or Regeneration attributes, and has to be healed naturally. The Incurable modifier is a stronger version of this, and basically inflicts Wounds That Will Not Heal.

Pokémon: The move Heal Block prevents the target Pokemon from healing, whether by its own moves, abilities, terrain, or items (for the last one, only Generation V and onward).

Resident Evil 4: Regenerators and Iron Maidens can only be killed by using a special scope on a rifle to aim at specific places were the Las Plagas parasites are inside their bodies.

A few particularly powerful wizards in Arcanum have the ability to summon a regenerative cocoon at the moment of death, healing their wounds and increasing their lifespans. The Vendigroth Device is a weapon which was specifically designed to combat this technique, and exploits the fragile balance between magic and science to invert the cocoon and make it rip the mage apart instead.

The Serpent boss in Golden Sun: The Lost Age has a regeneration ability which lets it recover about 2/3rds of its max hitpoints at the end of every turn. However, the area above it has a series of light puzzles which, if completed, allow you to shine up to four beams of light onto it, potentially cutting its healing to a measly 30hp/turn instead.

The expansion introduced several freely available healing items that restore health and/or mana over time (Scroll of Regeneration, Clarity Potion...) with the caveat that the effect ends as soon as the unit takes damage.

Inverted with the Phoenix and Destroyer units, who have negative health and mana regeneration respectively. The Phoenix respawns every time it dies (unless its egg is destoryed), while the Destroyer has several spells that let it eat mana or status buffs to empower its attacks.

Final Fantasy VIII has the GF Brothers, a pair of Earth-elementalminotaurs who gain the health-boosting 'Regen' buff when in contact with the ground. You can make the boss fight against them easier by casting the Float spell upon them to interfere with the Regen effect.

Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes has the Sneezing Zombie teammate, which prevents the plants and Plant Hero from healing as long as it's on the field. This is only useful against Plant Heroes with the Solar Class since they have the most healing-based cards, but is especially effective against them, shutting down the dangerous Heartichokenote Directly damages the Zombie Hero equal to the amount of health healed by plant teammates and the Plant Hero and Astro Veranote When played, heal the Plant Hero for 10 health AND increase their maximum HP by 10.

Diablo II: Some items may have the "Prevents Monster Healing" affix, which temporarily disables enemies' passive recovery of life points.

In Mass Effect 2, krogan and vorcha enemies can regenerate health when damaged. Burning them with an incendiary attack, or using Warp on them will stop them from regenerating.

Death Battle has several fights where this is used by a character to defeat their regenerating opponent.

Deadpool vs. Deathstroke: The Carbonadium sword of Deadpool's was capable of removing Deathstroke's healing factor, allowing the Merc with a Mouth to decapitate him.

Kirby vs. Majin Buu: The fight ends with Kirby inhaling and blasting Buu's own attack back at him, pushing him into the sun. While the former didn't kill Buu due to his ability to regenerate from a single atom, getting blasted into the sun and thus having his atoms ionized certainly did.

Wolverine vs. Raiden: While the former had a very powerful Healing Factorand an adamantium skeleton, the latter's HF Muramasa, being a Vibroweapon, was capable of weakening the Adamantium's molecular bonds. Eventually, Raiden ends up slicing Wolverine's head off and cutting that to bits, preventing the mutant from regenerating ever again.

Hulk vs. Doomsday: Both combatants had a powerful healing factor, but Doomsday was able to overtax Hulk's by stabbing him with venomous bone claws several times and leaving said claws embedded in there.

Sephiroth vs. Vergil: Vergil had a top-notch healing factor that could easily allow him to shrug off impalement and even getting bisected. Sephiroth's Super Nova manages to overtax it via the heat and power of an exploding sun, allowing him to finish the weakened Vergil off.

Webcomic

One-Punch Man: Melzargard's head has a small marble-like brain which allows them to regenerate endlessly. If a marble is destroyed, the associated head melts instantly, and Melzargard dies once they're all destroyed. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that he has multiple heads and can freely move his brains within his body. However, his regeneration always begins with his heads, meaning that the brain can be easily found if his body is completely destroyed and forced to regenerate from scratch.

In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Queen Moon used black magic to neutralize Toffee's healing factor, making him unable to regenerate. That's why he's missing his finger. Later Star goes Golden Super Mode and blasts him with so much magic at once his healing factor can't keep up and he's left barely alive and unable to come back from getting a pillar crushing what's left of him.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy